Chapter 5

As a child, Rico had always had a hard time with waiting. Patience had not been his best virtue. As an adult, he prided himself on his composure. He’d worked hard to harness his restlessness, focus it, and set an example of decency and grace on and off the pitch—a tribute to his father, whose sportsmanship was just as legendary as his football moves. Right now, however, waiting to get his cast off was making Rico so restless that he had visualized himself ripping it off with his bare hands more than a few times.

It had been just a couple of days since he’d been back in London, but waiting another day for it to come off felt like pure torture. If he didn’t stop pacing (okay, hobbling) around his flat, he was going to cut a trail in the floor. Kneading the knot at the nape of his neck, he made his way onto the balcony. Usually, the perfectly synchronous white facades of Kensington calmed him. Today, the sun was too bright, a complaint another Londoner might smack him upside the head for. He went back inside and held down the button that pulled the shades. They descended far too slowly.

My impatient baby. He heard his mother’s voice in his head.

His mãe had loved to tell stories of how Rico gobbled down all the brigadeiro before she could get the condensed milk truffles molded into balls.

Then a time had come when his impatience had dissipated in the blink of an eye. Everything had dissipated when his mãe and pai left home one evening to go to the movies and never came back. Well, they had come back, but in closed coffins because the car crash hadn’t left much of them. Everything had stopped that day and never quite started up again.

Rico had entered a fog that felt like glue, viscous and sticky around him. One moment he’d been in a hurry to rush from thing to thing—football, friends, school—then the next moment it had all vanished. There had been nowhere to go, nothing he needed to get to. That’s how it had stayed as he moved, seemingly in slow motion, from Rio de Janeiro to his mãe’s sister’s house in California. She had been his only living relative. At least the only living relative who acknowledged him. His father’s family had never acknowledged his mãe and him.

His pai had met his mãe in England while playing for Man U. He had asked her to go to Rio with him after he retired, and she had. He had asked her to keep their relationship quiet, and she had. If the fact that he never left his wife bothered her, she never showed it. She had once told Rico that she would do anything his pai asked of her. Because that’s what love meant.

At fifteen Rico had still needed a legal guardian, and that meant leaving his home and moving to California. Not that he cared where he moved. His ability to care about anything at all had also vanished.

That’s how it had stayed until he’d stopped a ball from hitting a girl on the head. Then everything had changed again. Almost everything. His impatience, his burning need to get to the next thing, hadn’t come back. Not until he made his way to England and found football again.

Being dumped by someone you believed to be the love of your life because her family thought you were worthless had a way of shaking you out of the thickest stupor. Over the past decade, Rico had left that heartbroken boy so far behind that he barely recognized him in his own memories. At least, that’s what he had believed until Zee’s bachelor party. Apparently his young self was more tenacious than Rico gave him credit for.

Dropping onto the couch, he turned on his laptop. Out of habit he scanned the tabloids to make sure there were no fires to put out. Things had gotten batshit crazy with the guys at the bachelor party. Journalists had caught wind of it, and some employees from the venue had leaked information. Rico had spent all day yesterday negotiating with media outlets, releasing curated pictures of the party and throwing in videos and sound bites from Zee and Tanya about their wedding to keep the illegally taken pictures out. Information was power, and controlling how you disseminated it was the difference between disaster and adulation.

Being the public face of his team for years meant Rico could divert scandal in his sleep. He reminded himself that it wasn’t his job anymore. That meant the team was going to have to find another face. But hell if he was going to let the tabloids make a mockery out of his best mate’s wedding.

After making sure that the paps had kept their end of the bargain, Rico skimmed the news. In America, the California primary race was gathering steam. Yash Raje’s name caught his eye. The candidate’s speech at the last Democratic convention was possibly the most exciting thing Rico had heard in politics in decades. He inhaled the piece about how the candidate had used a wheelchair for a few years as a teen.

Rico had to laugh. Now that he had let the portal to his younger self open, everything seemed to lead right back there. Ashna had rarely talked about her family, but her cousin’s accident had still been fresh back then and Rico remembered her telling him about how the doctors had declared that Yash would never walk again and how he had refused to believe them.

Yash’s quote should have sounded like the usual politician drivel about being able to overcome anything, about the human spirit and its power, yada yada. Only, the man had a way of making you believe it. The one thing my parents taught me was that only you can fix what you know to be wrong.

“It’s what my parents taught me too, mate,” Rico said to his laptop.

In all these years he hadn’t googled her, or kept track of her. He’d put all his attention into his game. Into proving her words about him wrong.

Don’t you see? When you look at it from my father’s point of view, you have no future.

Well, he’d ended up proving her father wrong, hadn’t he? Even a washed-up prince too full of himself to see that they didn’t live in the eighteenth century anymore would have to admit that Rico’s future had turned out rather spectacularly.

He had returned to California only once, to bury his aunt. If the guys hadn’t wanted to throw Zee the mother of all clichés, Rico would never have gone back to the US at all. And his head would never have turned inside out. The day after the party, he thought he had set it straight again. He’d come home. He’d tried to stop thinking about her and everything she had taken from him.

Moving his laptop to his lap, he propped his leg on the coffee table. On the surface, what he was contemplating seemed like a terrible idea; he was fully aware of that. This wasn’t him googling an ex. What he was doing was actively working on bringing closure to something he had ignored for too long.

Look at where it had landed him. Thirty years old with a string of lovely women who hadn’t stayed with him because he didn’t know how to give them what they needed. Every one of his exes was happily married to someone else. Actually, strike that, not every one of them. He had no idea what the girl who had set him on the path of “emotional unavailability” was up to.

He could imagine her as a society wife. Married to some doctor, or corporate bigwig, or lawyer, someone her father considered appropriate.

How had he gotten her so wrong? It was a question he hadn’t asked himself in a very long time. His fingers hesitated only another second before typing her name into the magic box that was Google.

The first thing that came up was her father’s restaurant, Curried Dreams. Apparently she ran it now. Had the old bastard retired? Executive chef, indeed! Who would have thought Green Brook High’s star goalkeeper would be off making tandoori chicken? He certainly had not seen that coming. She’d wanted nothing to do with cooking. The picture of her was fuzzy, something someone had taken from a distance without her permission, but the bearing was unmistakable.

Next, Rico’s eyes landed on an Entertainment Weekly link about a new show on Food Network. Ashna on TV? He supposed she’d grown out of her obsession with privacy and her shyness off the pitch. Getting her to take a picture for the yearbook with the girls’ soccer team had been hard enough. She was going to be on TV? Really?

The calm that spread through him as he scrolled through the piece was impressive. Time was a healer after all, because he felt nothing.

The article said she was going to be one of the professional chefs who was going to team up with a celebrity and compete with five other pairs to win one hundred thousand dollars. It was all a bit crass for the Rajes.

“All I’ve ever wanted was to be a chef, so this is a dreamcome true!” Something about the quote made him want to toss his laptop across the room. He slammed it shut and pushed himself off the couch. Anger rolled in his chest. He was pacing again. Hobbling like a bloody idiot.

The last thing she had ever wanted to be was a chef.

Rico never let himself get angry. At least not angry enough to raise his heart rate and heat his earlobes.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he picked up his phone and dialed Rod.

Yes, having an agent with a name like that was a bit of a ridiculous cliché as well, but Rod was the best Hollywood sports agent and Rico happened to be in a position where he had access to the best. Rod was responsible for the fact that Rico had been one of Calvin Klein’s longest-serving underwear models. At first he’d done it on a dare, but he didn’t mind the money it brought in.

“Hey, Rico, my man, how’s the knee?” Rod boomed, because his name wasn’t the only cliché about him.

“You know anything about Food Network shows?”

“Okay, let’s skip the small talk, then. Food Network is becoming bigger than it’s ever been. But no, I’ve never worked with them. Anything in particular you want to know about?”

“Yes, they have a new show, Cooking with the Stars. I want to be on it. As one of the celebrities.”

There was a full minute of silence. Which was a good thing, because, holy bloody hell on toast, what was he doing?

This was probably the first time in his life that anyone had made Rod Singh speechless.

“Why?” Rod managed finally.

A brilliant question.

Rico dropped back on the couch. “I’m tired of modeling underwear. I think it’s time to learn some cooking.” And because anger was still hammering in his heart and heating his ears from that quote and that picture, and the shit ton of memories exploding inside his head.

“No, seriously. Is this a dare, like the Calvin Klein thing?”

“Something like that.”

“I don’t think they can afford you. Let me ask around, but I’m guessing it’s more for failed boy band stars, retired soap opera actors, struggling comedians, authors who are looking for sales. That sort of thing. Too far beneath your pay grade.” You had to love agents. Rico said a grateful prayer for his.

“I don’t need to be paid. If we win I’ll donate my part to that animal rescue your little girl couldn’t stop talking about the last time you brought her to London. How does that sound?”

“The second half sounds great. Ami will be thrilled. But not the first part. We’re not doing unpaid gigs.”

“Fine. Work it out any way you want. You can get your commission and we’ll give the rest to the charity. I don’t give a shit, Rod. Just make it happen.”

“Are you feeling all right, Rico? I know the surgeries and retirement suck. But listen, we’re flush with offers. If you’re open to reality TV, we have a hundred options. I can get you on Big Brother.”

Rico would rather stab himself with an ice pick, in the knee even. “I know I just threw you, so I’m going to let the BigBrother comment slide. But if you bring me any reality shows other than this, you’re fired.”

“Right. I’m terrified. But okay, no reality shows except something on”—he cleared his throat—“Food Network.”

“Nope, not something on Food Network. Cooking with the Stars.”

“Got it. Anything else?”

“Yup. I need to be partnered with a particular chef.”

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***